On the evening before Thanksgiving, Hal Chase, a guard in the San Francisco County Jail, drives to the airport to pick up his step-brother for the weekend. When they return, Hal’s wife, Katie, has disappeared without a clue. By the time Dismas Hardy hears about this, Katie has been missing for five days. The case strikes close to home because Katie had been seeing Hardy’s wife, a marriage counselor. By this time, the original Missing Persons case has become a suspected homicide, and Hal is the prime suspect.

The Ophelia Cut: Dismas Hardy, Book 14

Moses McGuire has good reason to be concerned about his beautiful 23-year-old daughter, Brittany. She moves quickly from one boyfriend to the next, and always seems to prefer a new and mysterious stranger to a man she knows something about. But her most recent ex, Rick Jessup, isn’t willing to let her go, culminating in a terrible night when Brittany is raped. Within 24 hours, Rick Jessup is dead, Moses McGuire is the prime suspect in the investigation, and Dismas Hardy has been hired to defend his brother-in-law.

A Plague of Secrets

The first victim is Dylan Vogler, a charming ex-convict who manages the Bay Beans West coffee shop in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. When his body is found, inspectors discover that his knapsack is filled with high-grade marijuana. It soon becomes clear that San Francisco's A-list flocked to Bay Beans West not only for their caffeine fix. But how much did Maya Townshend - the beautiful socialite niece of the city's mayor, and the absentee owner of the shop - know about what was going on inside her business?

The Motive: A Dismas Hardy Novel

It starts with a double homicide. Because of the high profiles of the victims - a politically connected socialite and his glamorous fiancée - the mayor of San Francisco herself demands that a high-ranking detective be put on the case. And so Abe Glitsky is thrust into the controversial investigation.

Betrayal: A Dismas Hardy Novel

When Dismas Hardy agrees to clean up the caseload of recently disappeared attorney Charlie Bowen, he thinks it will be easy. But one of the cases is far from small-time - the appeal to overturn the murder conviction of National Guard reservist Evan Scholler, who has been sentenced to life without parole for the murder of an ex-Navy SEAL and private contractor named Ron Nolan. Two rapid-fire events in Iraq conspired to bring the men into fatal conflict.

The Second Chair: A Dismas Hardy Novel

Dismas Hardy is finally on top: as a managing partner at his thriving, newly reorganized law firm, he's a rainmaker and fix-it guy for clients leery of taking their chances in a courtroom. Now Hardy's up-and-coming associate, Amy Wu, brings him a high-profile case: Andrew Bartlett, the 17-year-old son of a prominent San Francisco family, has been arrested for the double slaying of his girlfriend and his English teacher.

The First Law: A Dismas Hardy Novel

At last recovered from a near-fatal gunshot wound, Lieutenant Abe Glitsky is back at work. But instead of returning to his old job as chief of homicide detail, he's assigned a desk job in the payroll department, where he has no business investigating murders -until his father's closest friend is shot dead in a downtown pawn shop.

The Oath: A Dismas Hardy Novel

When the head of San Francisco's largest HMO dies in his own hospital, no one doubts that it is anything but the result of massive injuries inflicted by a random hit-and-run accident. But the autopsy soon tells a different story - an overdose of potassium killed him, and the attending physician, Eric Kensing, becomes the prime suspect in a high-profile homicide.

Pam Sturgess says:"I'm an IDIOT! Don't YOU be an idiot. Skip this one"

The Hearing: A Dismas Hardy Novel

The call comes at midnight. It looks like a tragic and petty murder - a rising star in San Francisco's legal firmament found shot in a dark alley. But for homicide lieutenant Abe Glitsky, the crime cuts horribly close to home - unknown to anyone, the victim was his daughter. Seething, Glitsky leans hard on his only suspect - a homeless heroin addict found lingering over his daughter's body, with her jewelry in his pocket and a smoking gun in his hand.

The Mercy Rule: Dismas Hardy, Book 5

The Mercy Rule is a brilliant and moving human drama set against a backdrop of relentless suspense, legal complexity and moral ambiguity. Dismas Hardy, the former bartender, loving husband and father, and reluctant defense attorney of The 13th Juror, returns here in his most challenging case.

The Suspect

When Dr. Caryn Dryden is found floating dead in her hot tub, homicide inspector Devin Juhle targets a suspect close to home: her husband, Stuart Gorman. After all, Stuart recently asked for a divorce...and he stands to gain millions in insurance. His alibi - that he was at his cabin on Echo Lake that weekend - doesn't keep him out of hot water. But maybe a shrewd attorney will.

A Certain Justice

Somewhere in the once-placid streets of San Francisco, a young man is on the run, charged by the media with a crime he didn't commit, hounded by demagogues, hunted by a desperate police department. One cop knows that Kevin Shea is innocent of a brutal racial murder. An ambitious politician will use Shea for her own ends. And a down-and-out lawyer is all that stands between Kevin Shea and an even more atrocious crime. For when there's no law left, justice is the only hope.

Treasure Hunt

Mickey Dade hates deskwork, but that's all he's been doing at Wyatt Hunt's private investigative service, The Hunt Club. His itch to be active is answered when a body is discovered: It's Dominic Como, one of San Francisco's most high-profile activists - a charismatic man known as much for his expensive suits as his work on a half dozen nonprofit boards. One "person of interest" in the case is Como's business associate, Alicia Thorpe - young, gorgeous, and the sister of one of Mickey's friends.

Damage

The Curtlees are a powerful force in San Francisco, unscrupulous billionaires who’ve lined every important pocket in the Bay Area in pursuit of their own ascent. So when the family’s heir, Ro Curtlee, was convicted of rape and murder a decade ago, the fallout for those who helped to bring him to justice was swift and uncompromising. The jury foreman was fired from his job and blacklisted in his industry. The lead prosecutor was pushed off the fast track, her dreams of becoming district attorney dashed.

The Vig: A Dismas Hardy Novel

A beautiful woman paid it with her body. A seedy lawyer used somebody else's money. It's the vig - the exorbitant interest mob loan sharks take on their money. Now, in the city by the Bay, everyone has to pay.

The Hunter

Raised by loving adoptive parents, San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt never had an interest in finding his birth family-until he gets a chilling text message from an unknown number: "How did ur mother die?"

Stone Cold: Joe Pickett, Book 14

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially the persistent rumors that the man’s wealth comes from killing people. Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but he discovers a lot more than he’d bargained for. There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe.

Nothing but the Truth

When San Francisco attorney Dismas Hardy gets a call saying his wife never picked the kids up from school, he's worried. Frannie's a great mother. Turns out there's a good explanation: She's in jail. Unbeknownst to her husband, Frannie has just appeared before a grand jury - and refused to share a crucial piece of information about her friend Ron, who's accused of killing his wife.

Hard Evidence: A Dismas Hardy Novel

When the bullet-ridden body of a Silicon Valley billionaire washes up on shore, assistant D.A. Dismas Hardy finds himself the prosecutor in San Francisco's murder trial of the century. The suspect: a Japanese call girl with a long list of prominent clients. But when a bizarre series of events blows the case wide open, Hardy finds himself on the other side of the law - as a lawyer for the defense.

The 13th Juror: A Dismas Hardy Novel

In The 13th Juror, Dismas Hardy, lawyer/investigator, undertakes the defense of Jennifer Witt, accused of murdering her husband and their eight-year-old son as well as her first husband, who had died nine years earlier from an apparent drug overdose. While preparing his case, Hardy learns that both of Jennifer's husbands had physically abused her. But Jennifer refuses to allow a defense that presumes her guilt. She is not guilty, she claims. Hardy is now driven to seek an alternative truth a jury can believe.

The Hunt Club

A federal judge is murdered, found shot to death in his home - together with the body of his mistress. The crime grips San Francisco. To homicide inspector Devin Juhle, it first looks like a simple case of a wife's jealousy and rage. But Juhle's investigation reveals that the judge had powerful enemies...some of whom may have been willing to kill to prevent him from meddling in their affairs.

Taken: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 15

When Nita Morales hires Elvis Cole to find her missing adult daughter, she isn’t afraid, even though she’s gotten a phone call asking for ransom. She knows it’s a fake, that her daughter is off with the guy Nita will call only “that boy,” and that they need money: "Even smart girls do stupid things when they think a boy loves them." But she is wrong....

Guilt

Mark Dooher is a prosperous San Francisco attorney and a prominent Catholic, the last person anyone would suspect of a brutal crime. But Dooher, a paragon of success and a master of all he touches, is about to be indicted for murder. Charged with savagely killing his own wife, Dooher is fighting for his reputation and his life in a high-profile case that is drawing dozens of lives into its wake.

Publisher's Summary

From New York Times best-selling author John Lescroart, a riveting novel featuring Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky on the hunt for clues about a woman who has gone missing.

On the evening before Thanksgiving, Hal Chase, a guard in the San Francisco County Jail, drives to the airport to pick up his step-brother for the weekend. When they return, Hal’s wife, Katie, has disappeared without a clue.

By the time Dismas Hardy hears about this, Katie has been missing for five days. The case strikes close to home because Katie had been seeing Hardy’s wife, a marriage counselor. By this time, the original Missing Persons case has become a suspected homicide, and Hal is the prime suspect. And the lawyer he wants for his defense is none other than Hardy himself.

Hardy calls on his friend, former homicide detective Abe Glitsky, to look into the case. At first it seems like the police might have it right; the Chases’ marriage was fraught with problems; Hal’s alibi is suspect; the life insurance policy on Katie was huge. But Glitsky’s mission is to identify other possible suspects, and there proves to be no shortage of them: Patti Orosco - rich, beautiful, dangerous, and Hal’s former lover; the still-unknown person who had a recent affair with Katie; even Hal’s own step-mother, Ruth, resentful of Katie’s gatekeeping against her grandchildren. And as Glitsky probes further, he learns of an incident at the San Francisco jail, where Hal works - only one of many questionable inmate deaths that have taken place there. Then, when Katie’s body is found not three blocks from the Chase home, Homicide arrests Hal and he finds himself an inmate in the very jail where he used to work, a place full of secrets he knows all too well.

Against this backdrop of conspiracy and corruption, ambiguous motives and suspicious alibis, an obsessed Glitsky closes in on the elusive truth. As other deaths begin to pile up he realizes, perhaps too late, that the next victim might be himself.

Typical for the series except this one uses Abe Glitsky more actively. There were moments in the book that I felt Abe was made to look doddering, and deserving of his forced retirement. He made a bunch of rookie mistakes and I sort of winced at his foolishness. And even in the big solve, where Abe stands front and center, I didn't feel it was genuine.

Hardy was barely in the book, which this time was fine; but I wouldn't call it a Dismas Hardy book by any stretch.

Now about the story. The story was silly. A woman is murdered. Her husband is accused. There are all sorts of infidelities going on in marriages and in various departments of criminal justice. The resolve was a little implausible. You have to wonder if some of the bad behavior will continue by those in the story identified as truly guilty. You have to wonder if the fall guy (the final victim) was a convenience for the rest of the criminals in that circle. It seemed rather convenient to have the killer of the primary dead woman connected to all the deaths. About six murders occur in this book and by the end, there may be six previous to blame on this killer. Yet, it has no tension, no OMGs, no being caught off guard and no big surprise from the big reveal.

The ending was too clean. Too much information just showed up in the newspaper to justify the killer's motives, etc. I just kind of shrugged at the end. Abe's part in the finale was significant, and yet he seemed like an accidental hero. No final scenes with his wife. Mention of a potential reprimand, but nothing active or tense. The final scenes bring Hardy back into the picture, lecturing Abe, and, having taken little or no part in the story, Hardy morphed into a minor, all but forgotten character.

The series is usually better than this, but **The Keeper** wasn't the worst of them.

The first 7 hours of this story are quite slow. A 2 or 3 paragraph synopsis/summary would have been adequate for that length of the story.

The plot finally picked up around hour 8 and got interesting. Lescroart is a favorite author but I feel he should have abbreviated or added better pacing to the majority of this 12 hour ( audio length) story

Would you ever listen to anything by John Lescroart again?

Yes. I have listened to all the Hardy stories over the years and some of Lescroarts other work

What does David Colacci bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Collacci is excellent. Hi 'voicing ' is superb.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

The end had a good plot twist. Just not quite worth the time to get there.

This is classic Lescroart. It's set in San Francisco - probably a San Francisco of yesterday but he describes a crazy place I knew and liked. He's not a lawyer but he gets the procedural stuff and the sense of criminal law practice as well as anyone in the writing business. Dismas and Fran are getting older and in a way, they are both getting cooler.

David Colacci is, of course, the voice of the series and does for Lescroart what Richard Ferrone has done for the Prey Series.

In the last book of the series Lt. Abe Glitsky’s had been forced to retire from his job as Chief of SFPD homicide department. This book is mostly about Abe and what he is doing with his life. He sits at home reading until his friend Dismas Hardy, a defense attorney has him do some investigation for him on a new case of a missing woman. The woman Katie Chase, wife of a Sheriff Deputy who works at the jail is missing. The story appears to be the usual who-done-it until Katie Chase’s body is found. Then it turns into a story of political corruption or does it? Glitsky has stopped following the usual investigation procedures and is on a crusade. The suspense builds as the story twist and turns. I had picked out my suspect for the murder about half way through the book, but then as the story proceeds I start second guessing myself then the story looks as if it has concluded and I must be wrong. But the story keeps going and oh boy, I turn out to be correct. The book is lots of fun and the suspense keeps one reading. Guess I will have to wait until the next book to find out if Abe is working for the D.A. or is going private. I enjoyed the dulcet tones of David Colacci who has narrated the series from the beginning. It is great when the publisher keeps the same narrator throughout the series. I would give this a 3.5 start but alas they don’t allow for half stars.

I was not thrilled with the narrator for most of the book, but chose to ignore it because I really like these characters. As a resident of California I also find the subject matter Mr. Lescroart writes about interesting and well informed. There was one very tiny moment of dialogue that gave me the clue as to "who done it" and I was quite pleased to know I was correct! All in all an enjoyable listen.

I really enjoyed the story line and characterizations of this author, and the narration was acceptable--to a point. I could not figure out why so many of the people were given southern accents--didn't make sense, and was quite distracting. The story was very entertaining, and the plot was pretty good, only it was so disappointingly predictable--kind of like watching an old Western and knowing the villain by his black hat. Right from the start, every indication pointed to the murderer, and the "clues" weren't subtle enough, I guess--although I do respect a mystery that gives them all, rather than pulling a rabbit out of a hat at the end. I enjoyed the writing style, which succeeded at being engrossing, even though predictable. I will likely give this author another read to see if he can surprise me.

As I was listening to this book, I was thinking to myself that I miss Dismas and Abe. I am glad for a chance to catch up on their adventures. Personally, I am a legal mystery fan and love the court room dramas. I have all of the books in this series and always look forward to the next installment. This book entertained me and kept me guessing. I look forward to the next one from John Lescroart... I am a fan of this series and will continue to listen to his books. Worth the credit and the time.

Where does The Keeper rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

wow just keep them coming dismas hardy and the gang are some of my favorite charters its going be a long wait for the next book seem like I was waiting forever for this one and could not turn it off once I started listening to it

What does David Colacci bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

David Colacci is the man I have listen to a dismas book that wasn't read by by him and although it was good it seem to lack something wish I could find other titles read by him as riveting as the hardy series

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

yes I both laughed and cried though out the book then had to go back and listen to another of my stored hardy novels just cant seem to get enough

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